The Department of Justice accidentally sent a sealed copy of Jack Smith’s second report volume to lawyers for Carmen Lineberger, then learned the mistake only after the defense said it had already found three documents in the material and checked with the government about whether they belonged there.
The disclosure surfaced in a legal filing sent Thursday to Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed Smith’s case. It landed in a live case because Lineberger’s lawyers were given discovery on June 3 and later said they found three documents on June 9, including items embedded in electronic messages that were supposed to be turned over. After they reviewed the pages, DOJ lawyers confirmed they were copies of Jack Smith’s report.
That sequence matters because the report was sealed. The accidental release reached the defense team only after the government had already handed over the flash drives, and only then did the lawyers go back through what they had received. The defense said it stopped reviewing the material before examining the report itself, deleted the downloaded discovery and returned the drives. The government’s error, though, was already done.
Smith’s report dealt with President Trump’s handling of classified documents. Its disclosure follows Trump’s 2024 presidential election win, which helped keep the material hidden until now. What remains unclear is the part that would matter most to anyone trying to understand the mistake: what was actually in the second volume that was exposed in the first place.
For now, the record shows a sealed report leaving the Department of Justice by accident, reaching Carmen Lineberger’s lawyers, and being pulled back only after the defense flagged what it had found. Judge Cannon has been informed. The unanswered issue is not whether the release happened; it did. It is how much of a sealed special counsel report can end up in discovery before anyone notices, and whether the contents of that second volume will stay hidden any longer.
